CTO Supports Development of Broadband in Africa
A workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, to begin harmonizing the policy, legislative and regulatory aspects of the NEPAD African regional broadband initiative has ended with a commitment by stakeholders to accelerate progress towards the early completion of the project.
Participants underscored the importance of intra-regional multi-entity cooperation, and noted that while some countries had already taken steps to modify their policies, laws and regulations to support ICT convergence and open access principles, others may need some help to do so.Over the last 18 months the CTO has been offering technical advice to the 22 countries of the Eastern and Southern African regions, through consultancy assignments with the e-Africa Commission of NEPAD.
The latest assignment, which was the focus of the just-concluded workshop, was to assist countries of the region in understanding what is required to harmonize their respective national ICT policies, legal and regulatory frameworks, to make them consistent with the provisions of the Kigali Protocol, which has now been signed by 12 countries from the Eastern and Southern Africa region.
With a deadline of 31 March 2008 for the harmonization process to be completed by each member country, policy-makers, regulators and representatives of key regional organizations, also discussed varying processes for signing and ratifying the Protocol and for implementing the required changes.
Presentations and discussions included the state of ICT policy, legal and regulatory reform and convergence in countries represented at the workshop; the significance and implications of the co-ownership and licensing of a Special Purpose Vehicle that will operate on Open Access Network principles in their country; and what changes need to be made to existing policies, laws and regulations to enable countries to bring their operating environments in line with each other and for the successful operation of the infrastructure provider.
CTO’s involvement in the NEPAD Regional Backbone project is well established. In January 2006, the CTO was contracted by the World Bank to carry out a study on the Legal, Policy and Regulatory aspects of the terrestrial broadband section of the Regional Backbone Infrastructure (RBI) Project. As part of that contract, the CTO provided e-Africa with a package of advisory services which included the development of the Kigali Protocol in line with NEPAD e-Africa’s established principles.
The e-Africa Commission’s Regional Harmonisation workshop for the NEPAD Broadband RBI Project was facilitated by a team of consultants from the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO).
Source: CTO
